


Kore to Persephone

by gootarts



Category: Umineko no Naku Koro ni | When the Seagulls Cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 15:46:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12535324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gootarts/pseuds/gootarts
Summary: In old myths, you become bound to the realm of the dead by eating their food.It's the second game, and Battler is starting to see the symbolism.





	Kore to Persephone

**Author's Note:**

> First fic I've written in must be years! Related, but figuring out how to make redtext on ao3 is basically rocket science.

 

It’s around the first twilight of the second game that he realizes he hasn’t eaten anything since when he was still a piece on the gameboard, back around the end of the first game. He’d avoided the snacks laid out for the witch’s tea party at the time, more focused on what the hell was happening. It was easy to forget about hunger when presented with the scenes on the gameboard, even moreso when he was shown the opening acts of the second game. He’d been watching the piece that was Beatrice from the windows of the parlor, trying to come up with some sort of explanation, some _how_ as to explain the witch’s sudden appearance on the board.

In a way, only seeing and hearing the bloody scene, with the candies piled upon the floor, the bodies laid almost like they were about to eat, was worse than experiencing the scene itself as a piece. His mind automatically filled in all the blanks and started conjuring up illusionary smells and textures, experiences that probably turned his stomach more than the scene itself.

The candy was also an unhelpful reminder that he’d not eaten for a good twelve hours. Beato had skipped large chunks of the family conference, but the game had still drawn itself out long enough that hunger began to wear on him, in both a gnawing emptiness and a slowly growing headache, which was no doubt from dehydration. He’d forgotten about it momentarily when Beato began one of her tirades about how the locked room had to be the result of a witch, but when he calmed down, after they discovered the corpse of Jessica, once they started the wolves and sheep puzzle, his stomach started grumbling, barely loud enough for her to hear.

Her reaction is slow, but she notices almost instantly; she raises an eyebrow at first, snaps her fingers after a moment, and a teacup materializes in front of him in a shower of golden butterflies, already filled with warm tea. A second later, a small plate in the center of the table, laden with small cookies follows suit. It’s a nice try, on her part. He’s not touch going anything she lays out in front of him, not after the corpses of first twilight, literally stuffed to the gills with candy (and more importantly, possibly poisoned). The cup is shoved aside, the plate pushed towards her; Beato scoffs, but resumes the game, both the tea and platter vanishing in the same golden swarm they appeared in.

He’s pretty sure the scene immediately after, with Gohda and the servants cooking, is meant as some sort of response from Beato. His stomach reacts to it more strongly than earlier, and loudly enough that there’s no mistaking the sound. A teacup appears in front of him again, but instead of pushing it aside, he shoves it off the table, the ceramic shattering once it hits the ground with a loud clatter. He shoots her another glare, one to say that _no_ , he’s not going to even _think_ of touching the food. His gaze is ignored. Beato is focused on the shattered cup, and a second later, it wobbles and moves, its pieces and tea slowly tracing out the reverse of the arc it had just been thrown in. The pieces meld together, the tea obediently returns to the cup, and the witch rests her head on one of her hands.

“Drink.” The words are framed as a command as she reaches across the table, tapping the saucer with her pipe, locking eyes with him. He glances away, crossing his arms. The game, now paused in the middle of the kitchen, is the only thing he can turn his eyes to, but it only elicits another pang of hunger (luckily, there is no noise this time, but it’s enough to make him doubt that he’ll be able to keep up any form of coherent reasoning at this rate).

He’s not looking directly at her, so he misses the exact action, but she summons something red, cracks it in two with her hands, then stretches one of her arms out across the table. After a moment of silence, she speaks again, shaking the thing in her hand to emphasize her point. “If you don’t eat, you can’t think. Having you as an opponent is pointless if you can’t think. Eat.” He spares a glance at her, and almost laughs when he sees what she has in her hand.

It’s a pomegranate.

He leans back in his seat, crossing his arms, a small smile on his face. “Aren’t you barking up the wrong religion for that?” It’s a jarring shift in motif from the christian-themed underworld she’s been showing him, but it’s fitting, in a way. He is Persephone, spirited away from his home, and she is Hades, taking his family, his body, his soul. The fruit is metaphorical, most likely, but it doesn’t make the implication cut any less deep. Still, he takes the leathery fruit in his hands and looks at her, but refuses to eat it.

“Hoh? You know your mythology.” The food taken, she leans back in her chair, the remaining half in her left hand. She studies it, casually puncturing some of the rind and freeing some of the seeds with her nails before meeting his gaze again, then glancing away. “It’s not poison. It won’t trap you. You’re already trapped here, anyways.” The fruit must be nothing more than symbolism then, to make him realize there’s no turning back, not unless he manages to beat her game. Beatrice digs the fingers of her other hand into the rind of the pomegranate to emphasize her point, and in that moment, he doesn’t see the witch eating fruit, but the lord of the dead, digging her fingers deep into a human heart, spurting blood-red seeds that drip down her hand. Her right hand, covered with innards and dripping juice, is taken to her mouth as she casually licks the gore off.

He peels one of the seeds off the rind, and idly rolls it around between his fingers, watching as some of the juice runs and stains the tips of them.

There’s two options here, really: submit to Beatrice, and eat her food, or starve, hoping to maybe solve her game before hunger truly sets in. Neither are particularly attractive; he gets the feeling that if he accepts her food, she’d do something like sneak the gore-soaked candy he saw spilling out of his relatives’ guts into the dessert platters. On the other hand, she could wait until he’s really and truly starving, and offer only the blood-soaked sweets to him, laughing and lording it over him like her piece did with Kanon just a short while earlier.

There’s a sigh. “Battler. Just eat the damn pomegranate. I don’t gain anything by starving you.” The words sound less of resignation and more of tiredness this time, which counts as a victory in his book, even if it is likely a fleeting one. She taps the table with her knuckles, still stained with bloody juice, and the windows begin moving and speaking again, resuming the game. She digs her fingers into the fruit again to retrieve any lurking seeds, bored, as Kanon appears at the back entrance of the mansion. Battler immediately shifts his focus as Kanon approaches the group, his movements jerky and puppetlike. He wants to scream to them, to tell them to run, but his words cannot reach and his fingers dig deep into the fruit as he watches, his emotions a mix of fear and anger. The scene is enough to make him forget his hunger, but only momentarily; Beatrice has finished her half of the pomegranate now, and has summoned a napkin to wipe her hands dry. She gives her characteristic cartoonish grin as Rosa begins to read the letter left at the scene of Kumasawa and Nanjo’s deaths, and he rises almost immediately to meet the challenge.

By the end of the argument with Beato, his head is reeling, not just from the riddle and the witch’s insults, but from the headache jabbing at his reluctance to drink or eat as well. He returns to his seat with his fingers resting on his temples. There’s a slow burning at the back of his mind, a knowledge that his body and mind probably won’t recover from this if he doesn’t eat. Beato will continue her game for however long it is until she gets bored, and he wonders what would happen if she does. He’d be tossed into the darkness, probably, not a thought for what happens to him after. Though...what happens if he does win? He returns home, and leaves this hell for his family.

His resolve has been steadily dissolving in this weird, dreamlike world, he realizes. It’s the witch’s fault. She’s been distracting him from his goal; like it or not, debating with her, arguing over the murders, is genuinely fun once the fundamental aspect of them arguing over murder is stripped away. But it’s also not a feeling he can keep in his heart. Not if he wants to return home to Ange.

The seed in-between his fingers begins to feel less like a seed and more like a heavy weight, tying him down both to this realm. He puts down the half of the fruit on the table, and sighs. It’s all useless...but if there’s a chance he might return, he’s willing to do it.

(when beato taunted him earlier, he could’ve sworn he saw himself, licking her shoes, in the reflection of the window. tasting her food is _nothing_ compared to what he imagines tasting her boots must feel like.)

He stares at the seed for another minute before quickly moving to shove it in his mouth; it’s not a moment he particularly wants Beatrice to see, though he suspects she’ll figure it out anyways, judging from the heat he feels rising to his cheeks.

The seed tastes like pomegranate; tart, slightly bitter, with a seed that crunches under his teeth when he chews. It feels heavy in his mouth, and even though he knows it’s just his imagination and not the witch’s trick, it burns like alcohol when he swallows it.

The witch glances over in his direction after a moment, and he averts his eyes. He’s got no doubt that she’s aware of it, between his lack of eye contact and flushed face. Thankfully, she doesn’t lord it over him, but instead pauses the game, raises her teacup, and takes a sip. There’s a pause, and slowly Battler mimics her. If he’s following the logic of the myth, he’s already trapped, after all. Not eating or drinking at this point just lessens his reasoning powers, and by extension, his chances of returning home. The warm tea feels mild on his tongue, but he doesn’t particularly care about the taste-just about how it’ll finally wet his mouth. He downs it, barely pausing to breathe, and sets it down with a _clink_. Beatrice doesn’t give any particular signs of approval or disapproval, but instead simply taps the table with her pipe, summoning a horde of golden butterflies that slowly gather on the table, transforming into a decently-sized banquet. The food reminds him of the meals on Rokkenjima; lots of Western-style dishes, with the smell of them making his mouth water. A teakettle and pitcher of water appear in the middle, elegantly gilded.

There’s a quiet sound, as Beato stands up from her seat and stretches. “Eat as much as you’d like. I needed to take a break, anyways.” She disappears in an explosion of gold a second later, leaving him alone with the buffet.

The food is good, but as he eats, he can’t shake the feeling that it binds him. The weight settles awkwardly in his stomach, a feeling he isn’t sure is a result of guilt or the witch’s preference for heavy foods, and he _swears_ he can feel the individual weight of the seed, heavy as a stone in his belly. This feeling of dread is only compounded by the silence of the room, now that Beato has left. The emptiness of the space makes him realize that he’s never been truly alone since entering Purgatorio, not since he was ‘invited’ here by the witch.

In a way, he’s thankful that he has time to himself without constantly having cackling ringing in his ears, but at the same time, there’s a feeling of deja vu here, and it takes a minute to place: it’s something he felt years ago, when he decided to go ‘exploring’ in the Rokkenjima woods during one of the family conferences, before Asumu died. He’d gotten lost in the forest around sunset, and while he knew there wasn’t anything there could hurt him (there were the parents’ whispered rumors of the witch of course, but the witch wasn’t _real_ ), it was still eerie. The woods were silent no matter how loudly he yelled for help, a mixture of both familiar and foreign. Shannon had eventually found him, huddling and close to crying, after the moon had risen.

Purgatorio is like that; a mixture of the familiar and the unknown. It felt like areas he’d been before, but at the same time, mysterious and unnerving. It might’ve been due to constantly being harassed by Beatrice since arriving, but her absence only heightens the feeling that something just _isn’t right_. Perhaps that was why he was so reluctant to eat; it would be an admission of sorts, that this place wasn’t just a bad dream he could wake up from, that it-and his situation-was real.

It might be what Persephone felt, when she was swept from her home, isolated and alone, surrounded by the constant mists of death.

 

(and yet, despite it all, she survived and returned to the land of the living.)


End file.
